Facts about India
Stone Age rock shelters with paintings in the shelters of Bhimbetka in Madhya Pradesh are the first traces of human life in India. The first permanent settlements appeared on 9000 years and gradually developed in the Indus Valley Civilization, dating from 3300 BCE in western India. It was followed by Vedic civilization, which had laid the foundations of Hinduism and other cultural aspects of the small Indian society. In about 550 BC, many independent kingdoms and republics known as Mahajanapadas were created across the country.

The empire built by the Mauryan dynasty under Emperor Ashoka more united South Asia in the third century BC. From 180 BC, a series of invasions of Central Asia have followed, including those conducted by the Indo-Greeks, Scythians Indo - Indo Parthians and Kushans in north west Indian subcontinent. From the third century AD, the Gupta dynasty oversaw the period referred to as "old" India's Golden Age. Among the notable South India empires were the Chalukyas, Rashtrakutas, Hoysalas, Pallavas, Pandyas and Cholas. Science , engineering, art, literature, relating to astronomy, philosophy and prospered under the patronage of these kings.

Following the invasion of Central Asia between the tenth and twelfth centuries, a large part of northern India came under the rule of the Sultanate of Delhi, and later the Mughal dynasty. Mughal emperors gradually expanded their kingdoms to cover a large part of the subcontinent. Nevertheless, several indigenous kingdoms, as the Vijayanagara Empire, flourished, especially in the south. In the seventeenth and eighteenth century, the Mughal and supremacy declined Maratha empire has become the dominant power. From the sixteenth century, several European countries, including Portugal, the Netherlands, France and the United Kingdom, as traders started to arrive later and took advantage of the acrimonious nature of the relationship between the kingdoms to establish settlements in the country. In 1856, much of India was under the control of the British East India Company. A year later, a national uprising to rebel military units and kingdoms, called the First War of Independence of India or Sepoy Mutiny, seriously challenged British rule, but ultimately failed. As a result, India came under the direct control of the British Crown as a colony of the British Empire.